Launch | Futuna: Life of a Building edited by Nick Bevin & Gregory O’Brien | Tuesday 2nd August 6pm

Unity Books Wellington and Victoria University Press
warmly invites you the launch of

Futuna: Life of a Building

edited by Nick Bevin and Gregory O’Brien

Tuesday 2nd August 6pm
Unity Books Wellington
57 Willis Street

As a humane expression of architecture Futuna is perfectly adaptable to interdenominational use, and it embodies in three-dimensional form the values of the Treaty of Waitangi – perhaps the only building in our culture to do so. To experience it on a fine summer’s day, when light intensities move the building, is to sense the rhythm of our homecoming, the where and what of our turangawaewae as New Zealanders.
—Russell Walden

Since its grand opening in 1961, Wellington’s Futuna Chapel – devised by architect John Scott and artist Jim Allen – has held a singular place in New Zealand’s cultural history. Futuna: Life of a Building tells the remarkable story of the chapel’s inception and construction, and its status beyond as well as within the architectural world. The book also tells the vexed story of the chapel’s sale to a developer in 2001 and its subsequent dereliction and, at the eleventh hour, rescue. Since then, the chapel has been transformed from a place of Catholic worship to a non-denominational centre for spiritual, cultural and artistic expression. With essays by Chris Cochran, David Mitchell, Niall McLaughlin, Gregory O’Brien and Nick Bevin and photographs by Paul McCredie and Gavin Woodward, this book takes us into the heart of one of the most dynamic and affecting human-made structures in Oceania.

NICK BEVIN is a director of Wellington-based Bevin + Slessor Architects, whose contemporary buildings in urban, coastal and rural spaces across New Zealand have won numerous awards. He is a fellow of the New Zealand Institute of Architects and Chair of the Friends of the Futuna Charitable Trust, and he currently sits on Heritage New Zealand’s Heritage List/Rārangi Kōrero Committee. Prior to pursuing architecture Nick worked as a chainman, farmhand, alteration tailor, childcare assistant and zookeeper.

GREGORY O’BRIEN is the Stout Memorial Fellow at Victoria University of Wellington for 2015–16. Between 1997 and 2009 he was a curator at City Gallery Wellington, where his projects included exhibitions by Ralph Hotere, Rosalie Gascoigne, Laurence Aberhart and emigre architect Ernst Plischke. His most recent publications are the poetry collection Whale Years (AUP, 2015) and See What I Can See: New Zealand Photography for the Young and Curious (AUP, 2015). In 2012 he was awarded the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement (Nonfiction) and also received a Laureate Award from the Arts Foundation of New Zealand. In 2013–14, he was awarded an MNZM for services to the arts.

We would love to have you attend book launches. If you wish to be notified about forthcoming launches, subscribe here.

Share This Article

Posted By

Unity Books Wellington - Proudly committed to local writing and publishing since 1967, and dedicated to keeping a dangerous variety of world literature too. 100% independent and Wellington owned. Come check us out at 57 Willis St and ask the staff for a recommendation - we know our books.

UNITY BOOKS AUCKLAND

About Unity Books

Unity Books is New Zealand’s leading independent book shop with stores in the heart of Wellington and Auckland. Both shops hold literary events.

We specialise in New Zealand and international literature, poetry, history, and nonfiction as well as stocking the best new releases by award winning authors of both fiction and non-fiction in all genres.

Unity Books offers a special order service for a wide range of in print titles. Order in store, over the phone or online for local, national or international delivery.